by Joan Smith
She put the phone down, thanked the shopkeeper on her way out, and set off in the direction of the Forman Park Estate. As she walked, she glanced at her watch and saw that her fruitless trip had taken three-quarters of an hour. What a waste of time, with every police force in the country looking for Peggy! Ernie Bevin House came into sight and she started to run, slowing after a few yards when she got a stitch in her side. She had arrived at the row of lock-up garages behind Peggy’s flat, and she realized that if she could scale a wooden fence she could take a short-cut. It was a pity she’d worn a skirt; she felt something rip as she hoisted herself over the palings. Thoroughly out of breath, she hurried across the pitted yard, making her way between an old BMW and a Cortina without wheels propped up on bricks.
Now she was at the rear of the central archway of Ernie Bevin House; she paused to catch her breath and was about to turn right up the stairs when she heard a scream from the first floor. It was repeated, louder this time, and Loretta broke from the trance caused by the first cry, forcing herself up the stairs until she collided with a woman at the top. Loretta struggled to hold the woman, demanding to know what had happened, but the girl went on screaming and fought her off. She turned to look at Loretta from half-way down the stairs, mouthing the word ‘ambulance’ before disappearing through the doorway at the bottom.
Loretta put her hands to her face, a chill stealing through her bones. Turning slowly, she made herself take the two steps that would bring her to the open front door of number eleven. She paused on the threshold, stifled a gasp, and walked mechanically forward to the door of the living room. There she stopped, unable to believe what was in front of her: Peggy lying on her left side, her head towards the door and her knees drawn up as if she’d fallen forward from the sofa. Loretta closed her eyes – she thought she was going to be sick, she thought she was going to faint, she put a hand out to the door-frame to support herself. She opened them: the scene had not gone away. This time there was no mistaking the bullet wound over Peggy’s right ear, a star-shaped black hole above which a single fly was already buzzing. Loretta’s gaze travelled in a line down Peggy’s shoulder and right arm to her outstretched hand. It was then, and only then, that she realized that Peggy’s fingers had just released an old-fashioned gun whose lack of adornment suggested it might be army issue. Loretta closed her eyes again and began to scream.
Chapter 9
‘You should eat something, you’ll feel terrible tomorrow.’
‘I’ll feel terrible anyway. I couldn’t eat, not a thing. I’d be sick.’
John Tracey shrugged and didn’t press the matter. Loretta leaned across to the low table in front of her and picked up the brandy bottle. It clinked against the rim of her glass as she poured herself another generous helping. Aware that Tracey was watching her, she sipped it gently instead of finishing it in two or three gulps as she had the first.
‘Thanks for rescuing me,’ she said, cradling the tumbler on her knees, which were drawn up under her skirt. ‘I thought they were never going to let me go. They were even muttering about charging me with – obstructing the course of justice or something.’
‘I know,’ Tracey said grimly. ‘I nearly hit that bastard Bailey. I was there nearly two hours before he’d even talk to me. It was only when I started shouting about habeas corpus and getting the Herald lawyer that they began taking notice.’
‘He must be good.’
‘Who?’
‘The Herald lawyer. If they were frightened of him.’
‘He’s the best – where libel’s concerned, that is,’ Tracey said, permitting himself a slight smile. ‘I don’t know how he is on getting innocent people out of police custody. I think it was the fear of bad publicity that did it, not me being able to get hold of a barrister at eleven o’clock at night. What time is it now, by the way? I took my watch off upstairs.’
Loretta glanced at her wrist.
‘Ten to two. And it’s – Saturday morning, right? I’ve rather lost track. I feel as if I’ve been at that police station for days.’
‘Are you sure you should be drinking that? On an empty stomach?’
‘Oh John, don’t nag. It’s been just... I can’t tell you how awful everything is. I – I don’t know what to do with myself.’
‘OK, OK. Listen, why not try and get some sleep? I’ve put some sheets on the bed in the spare room. You’re honoured – they’re actually clean.’
Loretta ignored his attempt at a joke.
‘I couldn’t sleep. After all that? I feel as if I’ll never sleep again.’ She raised the glass to her lips and swallowed quite a lot of brandy.
Tracey pulled a face and moved the bottle out of Loretta’s reach.
‘Well, in that case, do you want to talk about it? Get it off your chest?’
‘Yes. But what about your job? You’re working tomorrow – today, aren’t you?’
Tracey waved the objection away. ‘They’ll understand. I rang the news editor at home as soon as I got your call. I said you were in trouble – he’s a good guy. The story I’m doing can wait, it’s not the end of the world if it doesn’t appear this Sunday. So – what happened?’
‘Bailey says it was suicide.’
‘And you say it wasn’t.’
‘I know it wasn’t. I left her there while I went to ring you. She was going to talk to you, tell you the whole thing. She wasn’t suicidal. There was no reason for her to kill herself. I’d promised to help her, said we’d get a lawyer and all that. She had less reason to kill herself yesterday than at any time since Clara was murdered.’
‘So why does Bailey think...?’
‘Oh, Bailey. He says she did it in a fit of remorse and because she knew he was closing in on her. It happened just after he’d given her name and description to the press, you see.’
‘Remorse? Remorse for –’
‘For killing Clara.’
‘Did she kill Clara?’
‘Of course she didn’t! It was Colin, Colin Kendall-Cole. The MP. The one who turned up on Clara’s doorstep just after I found her body. Pretended to turn up, I should say.’
‘Hang on a minute, Loretta. You’re saying that – you’re telling me Clara was murdered by a Tory MP?’ Tracey couldn’t hide the incredulity in his voice.
Loretta glared at him, then jumped to her feet.
‘Here you are!’ she cried, grabbing the phone and thrusting it at him. ‘Why don’t you ring for the men in white coats? That’s what Bailey thinks – that I’m some sort of loony. And you do, too, don’t you?’
Tracey got up, took the phone from her, and propelled her gently back to the sofa.
‘Come on, Loretta, you know I don’t think anything of the sort. It was just a bit unexpected, that’s all.’ He returned to his chair and waited while she composed herself. ‘Remember, all I know is that I got a frantic phone call from you saying you were at Clapton nick and they wouldn’t let you go. Take it slowly.’
‘I’m sorry. It’s just – he was so awful, Bailey. And the other one I saw, the one who was in charge till Bailey got there from Oxford. That was about half past eight. I don’t know why it took him so long. I went through the whole thing with him, the London one, while we were waiting for Bailey. And he said just what you said.’ She put on a sarcastic tone. ‘You’re telling me, miss, that Mrs Wolstonecroft was shot by a Member of Parliament? You should have seen his face when I told him Colin shot Peggy as well!’
Tracey leaned over the side of his chair and picked up the brandy bottle. He saw that Loretta was watching him suspiciously and paused before filling his glass. ‘Go on, I’m listening. This is all new to me. When I left you last night – I mean Thursday night – you said you had, er, one or two things to do up there’ – Tracey suddenly looked embarrassed – ‘before you came back to London. I didn’t know anything was wrong until I found a piece of paper on my desk saying my wife had called. I mean, I thought something was up then. You never called yourself that even when we were livi
ng together. But I had no idea ... when you rang and said you were at Clapton nick my first thought was that you’d had some sort of car accident. I’ve got a lot of catching up to do.’
‘OK.’ Loretta thought for a moment. ‘It all started when I got a message from Peggy through the women at the peace camp – just where she was and that she wanted to see me. I came dashing up to London, I thought she was hiding because her husband had killed Clara. But he hadn’t. He was at Clara’s earlier in the evening, before the murder, but Clara sent him off with a flea in his ear. Then Colin arrived. With me so far?’
‘I think so.’ Tracey was feeling anxiously in his jacket pocket and withdrew his cigarettes. He kept his eyes averted from her as he lit one, his first since they’d arrived at his house from the police station.
‘Clara had asked him to come. She was furious about the way he kept attacking the peace camp. She felt very passionately about it, you know. The attack on Libya, all those people being injured, it really horrified her. I suppose Gilbert was right in a way – he was a friend of hers, you don’t need to bother about him. I was just thinking about something he said, that Clara had all the zeal of the convert, and he was right. She’d been going along for years not thinking about why the base was there, and then – wham! It suddenly hit her.
‘Anyway – she told Peggy to hide behind the curtains. It sounds like she was looking forward to talking to Colin, she knew she’d got him where she wanted him – I suppose she wanted to show off a bit. She told Colin to leave the camp alone, all this stuff about them being lesbians and deserting their families. And she threatened him.’
‘I don’t understand this bit. How?’
‘Well, Colin turns out to have a murky past. Apparently she produced a letter, one she’d kept for years. It was from a friend of hers, a girl she’d been at Oxford with. She’d written to say she was leaving because Colin had got her pregnant and she was having to have an abortion. An illegal one, of course. You can see how damaging that would be to an up-and-coming Tory MP – Victorian values and all that. Especially as his wife’s a Catholic.’
‘And he knew about this abortion?’
‘That’s the point. He paid for it.’
‘Wow,’ Tracey inhaled deeply and blew smoke across the room.
‘And now the letter’s gone.’
‘Gone? What do you mean?’
Loretta’s face twisted as though she was in agony.
‘Peggy had a copy, she had it at the flat. We were going to show it to you, it was our main piece of evidence! But he must’ve taken it. That’s how I know he killed her. This afternoon, while I was trying to find a phone. That and the gun.’ She felt in the pocket of her skirt for a handkerchief and wiped her eyes. ‘I’m sorry, I’m not telling this very well. You see, she didn’t mention anything about the gun when I talked to her, when she told me what happened on Tueday night. I’m sure she would have mentioned it if she’d picked it up. She told me she had the letter, she said it was in her handbag. But when I got back – and she was there, on the floor’ – Loretta stopped and blew her nose – ‘when I got back the gun was there, by her hand. And the letter was gone.’
‘But surely, Loretta, if you’re saying he came to the flat in broad daylight, somebody must have seen him?’
‘That’s what I thought. I made them knock on all the doors near by, the police I mean. But it was hopeless. D’you know what those estates are like? The flat next door is boarded up, the one after that’s got an old woman in it who’s afraid to open her own front door ... There were some lads playing around when I first arrived, about twelve years old, two white and one black, but I don’t know where they came from. Anyway, it’s not the sort of place where people fall over themselves to help the police. Even though Sharon, she’s the woman who found Peggy, even though she was screaming blue murder, no one came out to see what was going on till the ambulance and all the police cars arrived.’
‘OK.’ Tracey stubbed out his cigarette in the ash-tray on the coffee table. ‘You’re saying this guy Colin killed Peggy with the gun he used on Clara. How did he know where to find her?’
Loretta nodded. ‘I’ve thought about that. When he threw away Peggy’s barrel bag in the garden, after he killed Clara, he must have kept her purse. Or her handbag. He was trying to make it look like a robbery, remember. Sharon’s address must have been in it – she’d just moved and Peggy said she had trouble remembering it.’
‘And when he got to the flat? How did he get in? I presume the door wasn’t forced?’
‘No, nothing like that.’ Loretta’s shoulders suddenly began to heave and she put her handkerchief to her face to wipe away a fresh crop of tears. ‘That’s what I feel so bad about – I think it’s my fault!’
‘What is?’
‘Him getting into the flat. My car was parked in the road, you see. I think he knew I was there – all he had to do was pretend I’d sent him, that he was a friend of mine!’ She blew her nose hard.
‘But surely Peggy would have recognized him? Even if he –’
‘No! That’s the point! She didn’t see him on Tuesday night she didn’t know what he looked like.’
‘Hang on a minute. Why should he recognize your car? When did he see it before?’
‘It was parked outside the cottage the other morning, when I made him coffee. He must have seen it then.’
‘Even so ... how many white Fiat Pandas are there in the world? It’s hardly an unusual make.’
‘Perhaps he recognized the number, some people remember things like that. And it’s got a CND sticker in the back window.’
‘That’s probably true of half the cars in Hackney.’
‘All right, maybe he saw me leaving the flat, I don’t know. I was so desperate to find a phone box I didn’t waste time looking round for old acquaintances.’
‘So you think he got in and overpowered her... I suppose it’s feasible.’
‘And the thing about the gun, and Peggy’s purse, the stuff he took from Clara’s house – I’ve thought about that as well. The police searched him and his car on Tuesday night, and they didn’t find anything. What I think is, he knew of some hiding-place, an old well or something – he used to play with Clara’s brother when he was a boy. And Thursday morning, when he said he was looking for Jeremy, he’d come to get it back. He was carrying a briefcase, I didn’t think anything of it at the time, but that’s what it was for. He came back as soon as the police were out of the way and put it all in his briefcase.’
‘You have got it all worked out. You told Bailey all this?’
‘Not all of it. He wouldn’t listen. And some of it I didn’t work out straight away, I was too upset. All Bailey kept going on about was how I knew Peggy was there and why I hadn’t told the police. I had to make up a story about an anonymous letter, and then he wanted to know why I hadn’t kept it. I really did think he was going to charge me.’
‘So – the official version is murder followed by suicide. To be fair to Bailey, it is a lot neater than what you’ve just told me. The idea that someone got into the flat and – wait a minute. What about the husband? How do you know Peggy was telling the truth? How do you know she wasn’t protecting her husband, and he got into the flat and killed her? After all, you never saw this famous letter.’
A look of anguish passed across Loretta’s face. She held out her hands palm upwards, opening and closing them in an expression of her frustration.
‘I know she was telling the truth, I just know it.’
‘No you don’t, Loretta, you just want to believe it. She could have made the whole thing up to divert suspicion from herself and – what did you say his name was?’
‘Mick. Well, at least you aren’t convinced it was suicide either.’ She gave him a triumphant look.
‘I don’t – look, Loretta, all I’m saying is that the case against Colin is no better than the one against this Mick. Or, to put it another way, one’s as flimsy as the other.’
‘So
you’re saying Peggy went to all that trouble to get me to Hackney and chose that moment to shoot herself?’ Loretta was getting angry again. ‘In a fit of remorse which just happened to strike the minute I walked out of the door – three days after the murder?’
‘OK, OK. This isn’t getting us anywhere ... Even if you’re right, you’re never going to prove it, you know.’
Loretta looked at him without speaking. Tracey produced his cigarettes again, shook one out and lit it.
‘Another thing. If you are right, where does the Yank fit into all this? The character you met in the churchyard?’
Loretta shifted a little on the sofa. When she spoke, her voice was calmer. ‘I think he was telling the truth. His men were trying to frighten Clara, but they didn’t have anything to do with the murder. I suppose we ought to be grateful they draw the line somewhere.’ She raised her glass to her lips and finished her brandy.
‘Fingerprints,’ Tracey said suddenly. ‘Did they find any on the gun, or in the flat? Ones they couldn’t identify, I mean? That would support your story.’
Loretta smiled briefly and shook her head. ‘He’s too clever for that. The gun had been wiped, the only prints on it were Peggy’s. And they found mine and Sharon’s in the flat, on teacups and things, plus about one smudge mark from a pair of gloves. Bailey didn’t think much of that. Oh, there’s something else I worked out about Tuesday night – why Colin went rushing into the drawing room to look at Clara’s body. It was so he could explain any fingerprints he’d left in there. He really is very clever.’
‘Not just clever, if he managed to think of all that – he’d have to be a genius. Anyway, Loretta, everything you’ve said could apply just as much to Mick. You’ve got no proof that Colin killed either of them.’
‘I have! Oh, all right, it’s not something that would stand up in a court of law. But it’s – it’s enough for me. I know Peggy. I know she was telling the truth. I saw her with Mick, you didn’t. She’d never have protected him. Colin killed her, and now he’s going to get away with it.’